Someone -- I’m not sure who it was -- once said it takes a man to teach a boy to be a man.

Being an important force in a young man's life -- or a child's life -- doesn't require that you be related to him, our columnist saysMLive file photo

You’ll notice that I never invested the time or effort to establish the authorship of this piece of wisdom. Maybe it’s because even now, years after I first heard it, I’m still unconvinced. It’s not that I doubt the power of a father the shaping of a child. To the contrary, I think that in this culture of broken households, we’ve given short shrift to the importance of fathers and their presence in their children’s lives.

But keep in mind that you’re reading the words of someone whose most fundamental lessons in manhood came from a woman.

Even so, I am fascinated by father-son relationships. I’ve given the third degree to virtually every friend I have who enjoyed a rich, lasting relationship with his or her father. If nothing else, I wanted to remind myself of what I missed when my own father took off for parts unknown.

But even if it’s true that it takes a man to teach a boy, etc., etc., it’s worth noting that no one said which man had to be there doing the teaching.

I was listening a short time ago to someone talk about his own father and his own upbringing.

It was interesting to hear him recount it. It was half a week before Father’s Day, and yet this wasn’t a Father’s Day tribute. To the contrary, it was an everyday conversation. It was about the everyday power that fathers can exercise -- how they can shape not only their children’s lives but also the world they live in.

Paul Allen Billings was talking about himself as a child -- an impressionable child. He was talking about the way his father had taught him to be a man.

“I had a step-father," he said, “who embraced me as his own. I learned about how a father is supposed to act -- how you’re supposed to support your child emotionally, materially, spiritually."

And right away I wanted to hear this story afresh, even though I had heard it before. I wanted to hear the particulars and the outcome. I wanted to hear the difference it made.

So how did he teach you, I asked. What did he have to say?

The answer? Almost nothing -- at least not much to speak of.

As a child, Billings drank coffee, precociously so. And virtually every morning he and his father would have coffee together. They would share that small piece of the beginning of every day. It is interesting that it’s the work, the coffee, the time -- and not the words -- that Billings remembers.

“It’s not necessarily what he said," Billings said. “It’s what he did. I saw my dad going to work every day. I saw him doing what a father is supposed to do."

And yet something profound and electric happened during those morning coffee sessions. They didn’t just ready Billings for a day. They prepared him for life.

Those conversations let him know that his step-father -- a man who had chosen to invest his time, energy and being in a child unconnected to him through DNA -- supported him. They let him know his father believed in him. They let him know there would be plenty of support -- and no excuses.

They gave him a blueprint for the day he would become a father himself.

That impressionable youngster, that coffee-guzzling child, is buried deep in Billings’ past. Now he has founded an urban radio station. He has established a full network of programs for community development and support. One of those programs encourages adults to serve as mentors. He has served as a mentor himself.

Now Billings has raised two daughters of his own. None of this was easy, but some of it came from his own upbringing. He had seen it done before.

Once upon a time, his father had been there for him, teaching him to be a warrior in a nonviolent world. His father had been there, preparing him for an unpredictable world.

His father -- his real father -- had done this.

I still don’t know if it takes a man to teach a boy to be a man. I just knows that sometimes a wire comes alive between two people -- even when there is no genetic connection to be found.